Research on entrepreneurship in Malaysia has grown timidly in recent years. In fact, immigrant entrepreneurship, as a globally growing avenue of research, has not captured much interest among scholars in developing countries. What is abnormal is that the lack of interest over immigrant entrepreneurship research comes despite the strong presence of immigrants in the country and their large involvement in and contribution to the economy of the country. This paper reviewed the few studies found in the literature that take in their essence first generation businesses in Malaysia and discussed their scope of interest, findings, strengths, and weaknesses in light of the findings available in the literature. Ultimately, the paper aimed to further our understanding on how the link between migration (especially the migration of workers) and entrepreneurship in Malaysia is shaped, to invigorate our understanding on what characterizes the behavior of immigrant businesses, and to provide guidelines for future research in this discipline in the country. We found that the research is limited, but rich in topics where it focuses on immigrants from South and Central Asia.

Length of stay, a concept not properly addressed in migration studies, refers to the usual period spent by an immigrant in the host country up to the moment he/she is surveyed for research purpose. This paper adopted a mix approach that blends review, synthetisation and discussion of existing research to apprehend the use of this concept in the literature and draw useful insights on the extent to which it influences business establishment and performance. Our discussion concluded with the following notes: First, immigrant entrepreneurship researchers have so far favoured length of stay over firm age in predicting the entrepreneurial outcomes. Second, length of stay was used in two different ways: Backward and forward. Third, immigrants with short lengths of stay or short settlement intentions tend to have lower propensities for self-employment compared to their peers who have longer settlement intentions, and they are most likely to locate their businesses within their ethnic communities. In contrary, immigrants with long length of stay or long settlement intention are in better positions to understand the mainstream market, more likely to behave like natives, have higher propensities to start a business, and prefer to locate their businesses outside the co-ethnic community. � 2020 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.. All rights reserved.